Monday, 24 February 2014

Now that the two E8 locomotives are commissioned and have been allocated to haul my Directors Special I already knew what I was going to do with my two FP45's that were in the original Passenger train livery with the very small Santa Fe logo in black along the lower portion of the car body.
I ordered two sets of Decals from M.B. Klein as none where available here in Australia and actually the freight cost more than the two decal sets combined.
I knew I needed to remove the Santa Fe so chose to use some "Testors ELO easy lift off Paint and Decal remover". What a great product. In the past I have used Solvaset with a cotton bud and just scrubbed away. The ELO took no time in fact I needed to get it off the rest of the paint or that would have come off also.
That done I set to cutting out the large red Santa Fe decals that were needed to update the locos to the Super Fleet livery from the sheet and decided to use another new product Mr Mark Softer to lay down the decals. I soaked the decals as per normal however one set took a lot longer before I could see the decal slide. I slid the decals onto the loco in as close to the prototype position as possible following some prototype images. Once positioned I applied a small amount of Mr Mark Softer. This product comes from Japan and worked very nicely certainly as good as the Solvaset that I have used for the past 20 years.

Here you can see I have removed the small SF logo. And just some of my junk in the background.

If you look closely you can see the decal setting solution working it's magic.

One side done

Here's #105 with new air-conditioner and antenna hooked up to SD40-2 5102 ready for its first run in the new livery

Here's Loco 100 sitting in the Augusta loco servicing area waiting to get some action. Hmm me thinks it is too clean.

I'm very pleased the way these two locomotives turned out. Now I have another two sound equipped loco's to operate main line trains between Augusta and Flynn Yard and a great set of E8 locos to haul the directors across the system.

I just couldn't close this post without adding another shot of these new E8's this time arriving at Winfield. What a great site and they sound awesome.

Saturday, 15 February 2014

A photo spread of the new E8A & B units Whilst trying out my newLED floodlights today I thought I would take a couple of images of the newest locos to enter service on the SFRSD at the same time as shooting a couple of the ballast cars.

First, here are a couple of the ballast cars that got weathered over the past few weeks.

Passing under the West end cantilever at Udall

Heading to Hackney

This BLI E8 locomotive has the best sound of any that are on the Roster.
Rod.

Hart Ballast Cars get a work-over As mentioned in my last post I had 4 more ballast cars in the process of being weathered. I used the same procedure spray, oil paint wash as I used for my Difco cars.
I used a mixture of Polly Scale Boxcar Red, Polly Scale Old White with a touch of Mud to give the cars a faded look. One of the problems I have found when weathering a few cars at the same time is that I tend to do the same to each. I worked hard to not do that with these 4 and deliberately left one out of the fading process to ensure that there would be some variation between each of them.
This is one of the cars at the start of weathering with nothing done to it.

This car has had the light spray along the lower sill and discharge area.

Here is three of the four showing the difference from no fading to just some along the bottom with the lower car receiving more than the second.

Now were getting somewhere. All three have received a wash of Van Dyke Brown and a second spray of dull coat. You can see that car number 86560 which did not receive any fading has taken on a nice dark look. I like the amount of wash that has stayed around the top flange area on all three. It looks just like the prototype image I was working off.

A second wash and another coat of dull coat was applied to 86560 and it looks even better.

This time I gave 86560 a wash of burnt umber and burnt sienna mix followed by a spray of dull coat.

I put the trucks back on and relocated the cars back at Perry ready for their next move. I will try to remember to take a shot of them sitting in the yard tomorrow with their Hays limestone load already installed.
That is it for another lot of weathering. I just hope my crew can read all of the road numbers now this weathering has been applied. Sure beats looking at shiny plastic though.

Wednesday, 12 February 2014

I have 4 Difco Side dump ballast hoppers that get to move around the RR most operating sessions between Winfield and Guthrie and places in between. So far these hoppers have escaped the wrath of time by staying shiny bright, that was about to end.
My first job was to remove the trucks but that didn't work as it looks like they have some different truck pin so I just removed the axles.
My second plan of attack was to fade the cars to have them look like they had been well and truly in use so a very light spray of a mixture consisting of , box car red, aged white and mud and they were then set aside to dry. This was followed by a spray of dull coat. They then received a few rust marks applied with a very small gnarly old brush in just a few places allowed to dry and another coat of dull coat.

Here how they look out of the box

And here is a side on view of just one of the three after a wash was applied of burnt sienna and raw umber. A spray of dull coat followed by some dry brushing on the lower portion of the body with some light grey. More dull coat, some Tamiya Red Brown on the coupler boxes and couplers and wheels

side one

side two.

And here is a shot from the top of all three after some Pan Pastels were applied to the inside of each car following washes of various colours of oil paints.

Now it was about time to set them back on the RR.

This has been a very rewarding day or two, so much so that 4 Hart ballast cars are undergoing a similar treatment are drying as I type this blog.

Sunday, 9 February 2014

Crawler with side boom
Many years ago my good friend Vic and I attended our first USA N Scale convention in Portland held in 1994.
We were amazed at just how big the train show was that was held the weekend after the convention. To see so many layouts, manufactures and retail trade stands was a real eye opener for the both of us. We saw so much more product than we had ever seen and remember this was well before the World wide web and internet of today. One of the small items that we both liked but one that I did not purchase during this visit was a product produced by a small company called REM. This was a series of track maintenance equipment that consisted of a high rail, hydraulic high rail crane and several other items one being a crawler with side boom. Vic purchased a couple of these (well he is into all kinds of truck and trailer combinations along with cranes in N Scale of all shapes a sizes).
We were talking one day about the fact I needed some more points of interest on my SFRSD and looking across his display I noticed he had actually built one of his side boom crawlers. "What are you intending to do with the other kit" nothing you can have it if you like. So a few bob changed hands and I was off and running.
The weather here in Melbourne has been really hot this summer high 30's C to low 40 C temperatures so this was perfect excuses to stay in the air conditioned house and get to and build my new kit.
Unfortunately the kit had a lot of flash and it took several attempts to get the flash off the body and tracks before it was even close to being acceptable and that is a pity as this type of kit is needed.

This is the opened kit with all of it's contents. You can see just a small amount of filings that have been removed from some of the parts.

Lots of days of filing just to get the tracks to fit in their correct position under the main chassis section and to clean up the tracks themselves but we got pretty close.
Once all of the parts were ready to paint the next challenge was to find a construction equipment paint colour. There is not that much around however I came across some Tamiya Brilliant Orange TS-56 spray paint that looked like it would work. Now armed with this and some grey Tamiya Primer all of the sub assemblies got a coat first the Primer then within about 10 minutes because of the heat outside a few light coats of the yellow.
The parts did not take long to dry at all so later that day I started to assemble the bits. First though I did brush paint the tracks with flat black. Once dry I then gave them a very light coat almost dry of ITALERI Acrylic Paint Metal flat steel. #4679AP If you have not used this before I can highly recommend it. Anyway that done I super glued the tracks to the body attached the side counter weight and then the special piece made by Vic the etched side boom. Boy does this make a difference to the appearance of the crawler. I attached the exhaust pipe and air cleaner did some painting of the driver seat, used a sharpie to highlight the grill and a few passes over the whole lot with some Pan Pastels and a dry brush with some metal and burnt sienna.

Here are all of the component parts attached to these place card holders. Boy they make the job of painting small parts easy as they can just stand on their own. These were first found by my friend John in a 2 dollar shop and I found mine on ebay.

I would have liked to have painted the grill better it looks OK from a distance

Note the neat Boom, if you look closely you will see the rivets.

Next job is to rig the boom and that will come later.
The next project will be another one of the REM. Railway Express Miniatures Kits the Hydraulic High Rail MOW Crane
Well that's another project almost completed.
Thanks for coming by.
Rod.

Wednesday, 5 February 2014

During the 2013 National N Scale Convention we held here last April we had Jim and Karen Younkins from Olympia stay over for one night.
They together with John and Dixie Benny from Everett and several of our local modelling friends also came back to our house for a BBQ on the Monday following the end of the convention.
As they were leaving Jim handed me a gift of a Micro Trains box car that he had custom painted and decaled for his own RR the MB & S. This was very unexpected. As all of my Locomotives and cars on the RR get some sort of weathering I thought that this should be no exception so I set about the task of doing just that. I am now using oil paints following what has been described in several forums. I wanted to take my time with this by first spraying the car with a diluted flat white with lots of thinners followed by a spray of Testors Dull-coat. I started doing the roof first which took several days to lay down to obtain what I hope is a reasonable level of rust. I then started on the sides.

The next stage was to change out the original M/T pizza cutters and add my 33 inch medium flange wheels including one metal axle that has a resistor added for detection. I have found that these wheels work very well and add significantly to the reduction of derailments seen on the RR.

I then hand brushed the trucks and couplers with Raw Umber adding some rust on the coil springs along with some flat black on the trip pin. I then just added a dab of silver on the tip of the trip pin to make it look like a glad hand.

Once the car card and way bill is completed this car will find a place on the SFRSD for many years.

One day I will make a small diorama on which to display any new stuff. Better still I should do it on the RR.
Thanks for stopping by.
Rod.